Unhappy Was the Lot
by Ashwinder
Summary: Hurin makes one final journey. One-shot. Complete.


_A/N: Some of the small details in this fic are based on information from_ The War of the Jewels_. The title is taken directly from Tolkien himself. Thanks to Magical Maeve for the beta._

**Unhappy Was the Lot**

The Sea. He was close now.

A bitter salt tang reached his lips, borne on the cold wind that blustered between the hills which sheltered the lands behind from their blast. He plodded through a defile, a long wound cloven in the hills, as if an axe had descended from the heavens in some far-off time. To his right, a sheer cliff face rose many fathoms above his head, and still the land towered upward from the point where it ended until it was lost in a mantle of cloud. If his guess was correct, this was a shoulder of Mount Taras. To his left lay foothills, less lofty, but to an old man, unscalable nonetheless. He continued his labouring climb up the stony slope, into the teeth of a merciless wind. Its chill fingers pierced his cloak, numbing him to the bone.

The leagues stretched between Doriath and the coast, immeasurable and lonely, travelled by none in these darkening days when the power of the North grew ever greater. For long he had toiled among the pathless foothills of Ered Wethrin, keeping to the mountains' southern face. At the pass over Amon Darthir, he barley spared his former home a second glance. No one who lingered in that land would welcome him to his former home. His family were all gone. The people he had once ruled reviled him for a traitor. They had shunned him once the previous year when he was but newly released from Angband.

Now they were a subjugated people. He could no longer bear to look upon them.

He'd gone on, past the defiled waters of Ivrin, and so through lands that had lain deserted since the fall of Nargothrond at the least, if indeed ever anyone had lived here. Beyond the hills in Nevrast, the lands had been uninhabited since Turgon's day, long before Men had ever crossed into Beleriand.

Turgon.

The bitter edges of his mind turned the name as if it was an enemy's sword. A glance at the surrounding hills revealed them every bit as unforgiving as the heights of the Echoriath—as if they, too, would refuse him succour. He laughed, a harsh bark that cracked against the encroaching walls of rock. If Turgon hadn't turned against him, he might have some hope left. If Gondolin wasn't barred, he would not have wrought ruin in Brethil. He would not have gone on to Thingol—evil would come of that meeting, too. So his heart foreboded as the Nauglamír changed hands. If only Turgon had opened his heart, all could have been avoided.

He leaned his weight on his staff, his breath short. Just a moment. He was completely and utterly alone in the hard world now. Out of the distant past resounded an echo of his brother's parting words to Turgon: "From you and me a new star shall arise."

No new star had been seen. The firmament twinkled as it ever had, feeble and distant, covered in the mists of Morgoth. Beyond his reach. No new hero had arisen to challenge the power of the North. His own son might have been such a one, but Morgoth's curse had taken care of that eventuality. That certainty.

Huor was dead; his wife had vanished. Gone now, all of them.

With a sigh, he pressed onward up the slope. Not much longer. As he labored on, a low rumbling as of distant thunder reached his ears, like the vague threat of an impending summer storm that battered green fields with hail and lightning. His journey was reaching its end, and he was nearly spent. The leagues had been unmerciful to one of his age, but he had faced them with the steadfastness that had earned him the name Thalion. He kept on now through sheer force of will. Only a little farther. He would soon need no reserve of strength.

Clouds raced overhead, their tattered edges fluttering like the torn banners of a defeated army before Orcs trod them into the wrack of battle. A sudden gust rent the veil asunder, and the sun showed its pitiless face for a moment. Its wintry rays shone without warmth, and the light blinded him. It cast into greater detail the harshness of the surrounding hills, revealing the cracks in the cliff face as battle scars.

_Aurë entuluva!_

His shout echoed through his mind. Vain words. He no longer had any hope of seeing the day of Morgoth's defeat. The blood that flowed from the severed Orc arms had burned hope away like poison. Twenty-eight years' worth of chill winds, the ice pellets and hail that rained from the northern sky had scoured his heart clean of it. Morwen's death had torn any last shred from him. The sting of sharp in his face had swept it away as he sat beside her body beneath the stone that marked his son's grave.

His son, two daughters, his wife—all taken from him.

Rancor scalded the back of this throat, but his goal was near. The rumble had turned into an endless rhythmic crashing. The salt burned into his lips. The sloping path steepened, and cracks crossed the stone. If he stumbled, so be it. He'd just get up and hobble forward again.

The sun slipped behind the clouds once again, and the wind fell. The way grew dim before his eyes, and yet he welcomed the darkness. Still he endured the last lap until the path ended abruptly.

He stood on a high headland that thrust outward from the foot of the mountain. In milder season, might have been green and flowering. The hills lay behind him now; indeed, the whole of the world seemed to loom at his back. He looked over a wide, dark expanse of water, broken only by the jagged ridges of waves. Belegaer. The Great Sea. To the right, breakers roared up and crashed on a rocky strand, hissing as they receded into the depths once again. Directly ahead, the waves broke against the face of a cliff. Above, the sky extended into the distance, a mirror image of the grey waters below until the two blended at the horizon, and sky and sea became one.

If he were to follow the edge of the cape around the feet of the mountain, he might look upon Turgon's deserted courts at Vinyamar. He had no desire to see their fair terraces which had endured the years undefiled by the servants of the Enemy. Turgon sat on his throne in Gondolin—behind him. And before stretched all he wanted.

He leaned out and took the salt air into his lungs. The height made his head spin, but uncurled his fingers from about his staff. He would no longer need it. The stout oak rod tipped end over end over end until it was lost in the depths. The pounding of the breakers swelled until the noise filled all his mind. The hissing that accompanied each wave teased his mind with an elusive recollection. He strained ears and memory until it came to him.

"Serech."

The wind swallowed his muttering. He leaned farther, desiring only to become one with the wind, the sky, the sea. He teetered on the brink before plummeting into the depths like a stone.

The ocean rushed up. Impact struck him like a war hammer. Freezing water closed over his head, searing like a thousand knife-strokes and numbing him to the core. Soon he would feel nothing. He opened his eyes, and they stung with salt. His lungs burned for lack of air. At last his mouth opened, gasping, but all that rushed in was choking brine. His sight dimmed. A murky blur surrounded him. Monochrome grey, the shade somehow familiar and strangely comforting.

In the moment before all went black, a pair of grey eyes appeared before his face. Behind lurked the vague shapes of two more, a man and a woman. In his head echoed a sound he hadn't heard for a lifetime—a child's bubbling laughter. But all his being concentrated on the eyes. Bright eyes with an Elven light to them, unconquered still and welcoming him home.

_Eledhwen_.


End file.
